The Home and State (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 13, No. 50, Ed. 1 Saturday, June 22, 1912 Page: 4 of 16
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4
June 22, 1912
Prohibition and Conservation
Britain, Ireland, Germany and France combined, amounts to the enormous sum of five hundred and
I
I
J. MARTIN JONES.
for Governor.
Nacogdoches, Texas.
T
1
. -
Oration of Herman E. Morris, winner of first
place in the Prohibition Oratorical Contest at Bay-
lor, winner of first place in the State Prohibition
Contest at Greenville, winner of second place in
thought and composition, third in final rank, at
the Interstate Intercollegiate Prohibition Contest
at Red Wing, Minn.:
HOME AND STATE
Commissioner Kone, fat, jolly and smiling, so
far forgot the duties of his office as Agricultural
Commissioner about one year ago as to forsake his
Texas office for some weeks and hie himself away
to Tennessee and Alabama in the interest of Wol-
ters’ anti-prohibition campaign, to find out what a
great failure prohibition was in those distant States.
But at the present time jolly old Ed Kone is very
busy presenting his claims to the prohibition Demo-
crats for re-election. He has forgotten all about
his neglect of the office he fills, last year, and his
trip to the "blind tiger” States one year ago; but
the prohibition Democrats have a better memory
than Mr. Kone.
the educator, and the true statesman, will join
with them in the conservation of American wealth
and American manhood. May the day hasten in
which the doom of annihilation shall be pronounced
upon a business whose trail is strewn with the
. wreckage of human fortunes and the salvage of
human lives!
approach, beggary for sustenance, and the jail
for a refuge. The evil prophecy of his young man-
hood may be unfulfilled, better influences may re-
deem him from liquor bondage, but the fact re-
mains that the drift of liquor indulgence is to
penury, despair, a vagabond’s life, an outcast’s death
and a pauper’s grave.
According to the internal revenue report of the
United States government, the American people
spend for intoxicating liquor one billion, nine hun-
dred and seventy million dollars per year. We were
duly impressed by the knowledge that nearly one-
half the output of our coal mines is wasted in the
operation of mining through disregard of the sim-
plest rules for economy. Such a fact astonishes
us, especially when we consider that the value of
coal mined in the United States in one year
thirteen million dollars. How appalling then the
waste of nearly four times that amount for alco-
holic liquors' We are rightly alarmed by the
devastation of our forests but the total of all our
timber products amounting to one billion two hun-
dred and twenty-three million seven hundred and
thirty thousand dollars, is only a little more than
two-thirds of the national drink bill.
For purposes of comparison let us suppose that
the American people reach a unanimous decision
to cease for one year all indulgence in intoxicating
liquors, a consummation most devoutly to be desired,
and an occasion worthy of fitting celebration. Sup
pose we celebrate in fire the emancipation of
America from the slavery of drink. Let us see the
nearly two billion dollars heretofore expended for
intoxicants; let us buy the lumber product of all
the mills; let every sawmill hum with industry;
let every lumberman have work; let the railroads
be blocked with train after train of oak, and pine,
and walnut, and hickory, and ash, and elm, and
cherry, and cypress, and cedar. We build it pile
upon pile, we rear it high, a very pyramid of wood,
a mighty mountain of wealth. What! You are
ready to exclaim. You vould destroy in one great
conflagration the entire lumber product of the
whole nation?
But why carry the supposition further? Such a
thing would be utterly impossible in actual fact.
Yet we must face the astounding actuality that to
the annual product of all the lumber mills might
be added the output of all the coal mines, saturated
with the petroleum from all the wells, the entire
mass be consigned to flames, and still the amount
of loss would actually be less than the annual
. liquor loss. This tremendous volume of wealth is
sacrificed to support the army of liquor dealers
who prey upon the prosperity of the American peo-
ple. For be it ever remembered that no saloon
ever produced so much as one dollar of material
wealth, and that every dollar spent for liquor is
really a greater loss to the nation than if it had
been destroyed by fire.
A truer representation of the waste of drink
would be to make our huge bonfire, not the cele-
bration of a second Declaration of Independence,
but a nation’s funeral pyre. The picture would be
truer to life if to the burning timbers were lashed
the forms of a hundred thousand men. The wails
of women and children mingle with the black pall
of smoke that rises to darken the sky in a horrid
votive offering to Bacchus, the drunkard’s god.
This is the tribute paid by a Christian nation to
one of man’s most beastly appetites.
While we are devising schemes and clamoring
for legislation to save our timber and our coal,
would it not be the part of genuine statesmanship
to inquire whether or not the men of America are
worthy of conservation? We might put on a cam-
paign to blot from the escutcheon of our nation
the dark stain of partnership with the foulest, most
bloody, most cruel, most loathsome, most corrupt,
most indefensible business which ever existed be
neath the stars. The business world is awakening
to the suicidal nature of a policy which, for the
paltry revenue of a commercial parasite, would bar-
ter a nation’s material welfare and stifle a nation’s
business. This awakening prophesies the ultimate
overthrow of the liquor business. Welcome the
day! Hail! to the business man of a new era; the
man of big brain and broad vision, afflicted with
neither the greed of a miser nor the coldness of a
Shylock; but a financier whose sympathies are
world-wide; who side by side with the minister.
THE FARMER CANDIDATE WITHDRAWS FROM
GUBERNATORIAL CONTEST.
Editor Home and State:
p EPRESENTING, as I think I do, the great
1 toiling and producing masses of the Demo-
cratic voters of Texas—that great element
of the party which literally earns its bread by the
sweat of its brow—I was two years ago a candi-
date for the Democratic nomination for Governor
and received some thousands of votes though
financially unable to make even an attempt to
canvass any portion of the State. Some six months
since, with prospect of being able to make a can-
vass of the State, I again announced as a candi-
date for Governor—believing that the time was
at hand when an intelligent representative of the
great producing masses of the State (who is ab-
solutely confident that he knows more law and
more of the Constitution than the present Gov-
ernor) should be promoted to preside over the
executive department of the State. But now, after
full and deliberate consideration of the expenditure
in the matter which I am unable to meet; and
after further unbiased consideration of the issues
involved as between the other two candidates and
the probability of the effect my continuance in
the contest might have on the result as between
their respective candidacies, and after today meet-
ing Judge Ramsey and hearing him discuss the
political questions of present interest to the people
and involving the welfare and honor of the State,
I am thoroughly convinced that patriotic duty
under all the circumstances demands my with-
drawal as a candidate for Governor.
And in withdrawing my candidacy I wish to say,
as one not in the vortex of the political storm,
but who sits upon its outer edges and calmly views
and calculates its effect upon the people and their
welfare, that in my opinion, as between the two
candidates the respectability and integrity of the
executive department of the great State of Texas
demands the selection of Judge Ramsey as the can-
didate of our party.
The richest and rarest tribute to any man who
aspires to an elevated position to be attained
through political parties is the fact that his po-
litical opponents can find absolutely no lodgment
for a charge against him more serious than that
some other man is supporting him, and such is
the case of Judge Ramsey. With a reputation and
character public, official and private as clean as a
hound’s tooth, his most partisan opponents acknowl-
edge his fitness, his ability and patriotism but
plead for another term for Governor Colquitt,
whose whole conduct shows him worthy only of
the minority faction which before nominated him
and forever standing with his ear to the horn,
“listening for his master’s voice”—and that master
the liquor interests of Texas. Not the thousands
who far away from the saloons and dives are upon
principle and conviction opposed to state-wide pro-
hibition as a means, but those actually engaged in
or connected with the barter and sale of liquor
in the few counties in our great State where such
barter and sale is not felonious.
For the reasons above stated and others too
numerous to here set out, I, as a toiler , and a
farmer—one of the hundreds of thousands of the
bread-winners of our great State—believe we should
support Judge W. F. Ramsey for the nomination
make her among nations pre-eminently fortune’s
favorite.
And America, like many another favorite of for-
tune, has not been wanting in ability to waste her
inheritance, but with reckless prodigality has
squandered and dissipated her abundance. In the
midst of an unparalleled waste of natural resources,
a Congress of Governors startled the American
people with the surprising announcement that
through their heedless waste, the nation’s appar-
ently exhaustless natural wealth was rapidly di-
minishing, and that the highest dictates of expe-
diency imperatively demanded the inauguration
of a policy of conservation. Since that hour the
doctrine of economy and preservation of the re-
sources of nature has been increasingly popular.
I desire now to show that the most colossal waste
and the most irreparable loss of the American peo-
ple is in relation to the traffic in intoxicating liquor,
and hence among policies of conservation a lead-
ing place should be given to the policy of prohibi-
tion.
In the work of Mr. Cutten, "The Psychology of
Alcoholism,” occurs the following striking state-
ment: "It has been computed that one million
five hundred thousand men and women are daily
either mentally or physically disabled for work as
a result of drinking.” Speaking further, he says:
“Let us compute the public expenses for the extra
number of the judiciary, the police force, the jails,
the prisons, the poor houses and the asylums. The
total cost of alcohol, directly or indirectly,” he
adds, “cannot be less than three billions per year.”
Think of the vastness of this sum! It would build
seven canals like that at Panama. We wonder at
the scarcity of money and the high cost of living,
when we riotously waste each year in alcoholic
liquor more than the capital stock of all the na-
tional banks combined! Only the most boundless
prosperity saves*us from speedy financial disaster.
However, this grim demon of destruction does
not limit the sway of its devastating influence to
the present generation, but insatiable in its lust
would blight with dreadful curse the generations
yet unborn. Listen to Dr. Gregory, in his work on
“Alcohol and Insanity:” “Only in recent years
the fact has been flashed upon the scientific mind
that small quantities of alcohol taken may do seri-
ous injury.” And further he says: “It is recog-
nized that the very germ from which we have our
eing is harmfully affected by alcohol, even in
small doses. As a result of this intoxication of
the primary elements of life children are conceived
and born who become idiots, lunatics, epileptics or
feeble-minded.” Who can compute the loss to
the race in efficiency due to the disastrous conse-
quences of indulgence in intoxicating liquor?
Yonder goes a young man, valise in hand, with
athletic form, a frank blue eye, an intelligent face,
but under the influence of liquor. He reels by; he
is gone; only another drunken man. But some-
how that unsteady form which you never saw be-
fore and never expect to see again has made a
vivid impression on your mind and heart. Name-
less, unknown, so far as you are concerned, but
alas, the very symbol of rum’s domination. Does
anyone believe that his drift is towards the gates
of prosperity, or the realm of contentment, distinc-
tion or peace? On the contrary, that road leads
to loss of position, work half-performed, shameful
discharge, debt, dishonesty, disgrace, ragged cloth-
ing and a “ceaseless cry for a job.” His way is
the way of disease of body, discontent of mind,
the alley for a thoroughfare, the back door for
A MERICA may truly be called a land of plenty.
I% Her rich stores of natural wealth are almost
limitless. She is the inheritor of a legacy,
beside which the far-famed wealth of India is a
mockery and the boasted richness of the valley
of the Nile a pitiful memory. Her rich, arable
fields, her invaluable forests, her broad navigable
rivers, her almost inexhaustible mines, her volume
of manufactured products exceeding that of Great
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The Home and State (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 13, No. 50, Ed. 1 Saturday, June 22, 1912, newspaper, June 22, 1912; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1569510/m1/4/?q=a+message+about+food+from+the+president: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Library and Archives Commission.